circa pentium 133-200mhz machines? need help with this.

Hey there folks.. need some help.

gotta pentium 133 (100-200mhz processor) at the local college surplus for $20!! sweet! .. everything seems
okay at boot BUT!!! everything is garbled with $$$ (actually looks like finnish or something.. I can tell it's missing some exe. and thats about it.

onboard everthing except sound card and scuzzy interface. all p2 keyb and mousey etc..

I think I need a video driver? simple commands although garbled like "dir" seem to work.

any directions/ help? I'd like to use this for a beos or nt. btw nt installs at boot but again I can't read the screen!

mach

later releases of beos would be incredibly slow on that machine.

does it post in readable english?

Thanks chris..

I'm looking for the answer to the garbled boot issue. there is no op system.

I driving at the boot sequence is full of $$$ pages of same.etc.. it boots almost as encrypted. hell it could be, I'm not sure. system is rock solid for what it is.

(beos would run fine and nt.. in limited portions of course.) but still a fine system is I can jump past this.

mach

Post a screen shot of POST screen maybe?

okay... boot screen start

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

etc.. then some other jibberish..

clear enough?

thankyou

mach

I appreciate the replies.

I'm not sure if it's a linux overlay or a bios issue.

machine is definetly a network potent unit.

Should I wipe out the hd and see what happens or is it a bios issue? 20$ I know but I don't want to mess this up. it's loaded though archaic but loaded?

mach

Got the dollar signs but i thought you might be seeing something else as well.

You do mention other gibberish.

Why not just see if you can reset the BIOS by jumper or pulling battery if possible.

Then see if same at post.

basically its $$$$ signs I can even do a dir as mentioned before.

then I see the equivalent of jibberish going through the boot process. yes I've done all the tricks. even disconnecting a couple of sticks of ram which brought me to the bios page which I couldn't read!!

I'm stuck at reading junk at boot or installing e.g. nt.

monitor swaps all the same...

if you haven't seen it before? just pass it on please.

Thanks/

mach

Nope have not seen it before so I will pass on it.

Just trying to help but not sure why at this point.

Oh well, have a good one.

is there a model number on the motherboard anywhere?

Have seen it Jeff,

MBR may be corrupted, try fixing it from a boot disk fdisk/mbr

I've had gibberish at bootup a couple of times. Just regarding my CD burner though. Setting the bios to default settings fixed it. Then go back in and set my cpu speed, agp settings, etc. If you can't read the bios settings well enough to navigate, you could pull the battery to reset.

maybe it has a virus or youre using an xt keyboard .. see if theres a switch on keyboard